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THE 



DISCOYERY 



COLONIZATION OF AMERICA, 



IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES. 



A LECTURE DELIVERED BEFORE THE NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY, IN 
METROPOLITAN HALL, ON THE IST OP JUNE, 1853. 




EDWARD EVERETT. 



BOSTON: j 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 

1853. 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by 

Little, Brown, & Co., 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



cambriuqe: 

metcalf and compaxt. 8tere0ttpebs and printers. 



LECTURE. 



Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Historical Society : — 

Although I appear before you at the season at which the 
various religious, moral, and philanthropic societies usually 
hold their annual meetings to discuss the stirring and contro- 
verted topics of the day, I need not say to you that the pro- 
prieties of this occasion require me to abstain from such sub- 
jects ; and to select a theme falling, to some extent at least, 
within the province of an historical society. I propose, ac- 
cordingly, this evening, to attempt a sketch of the history of 
the discovery and colonization of America and of immigration 
to the United States. I can of course offer you, within the 
limits of a single address, but a most superficial view of so 
vast a subject ; but I have thought that even a sketch of a 
subject, which concerns us so directly and in so many ways, 
would suggest important trains of reflection to thoughtful 
minds. Words written or spoken are at best but a kind of 
short-hand, to be filled up by the reader or hearer. I shall be 
gratified if, after honoring my hasty sketch with your kind 
attention, you shall deem it worth filling up from your own 
stores of knowledge and thought. You will forgive me, if, in 
the attempt to give a certain completeness to the narrative, I 
shall be led to glance at a few facts, which, however inter- 
esting, may seem to you too familiar for repetition. 

In the last quarter of the fifteenth century, an Italian mari- 



ner, a citizen of the little republic of Genoa, who had hitherto 
gained his livelihood as a pilot in the commercial marine of 
different countries, made his appearance successively at vari- 
ous courts in the South and West of Europe, soliciting patron- 
age and aid for a bold and novel project in navigation. The 
state of the times was in some degree favorable to the adven- 
ture. The Portuguese had for half a century been pushing 
their discoveries southward upon the coast of Africa, and they 
had ventured into the Atlantic as far as the Azores. Several 
conspiring caused, and especially the invention of the art of 
printing, had produced a general revival of intelligence. Still, 
however, the state of things in this respect was at that time 
very different from what we witness in the middle of the nine- 
teenth century. On the part of the great mass of mankind, 
there was but little improvement over the darkness of the 
Middle Ages. The new culture centred in the convent, the • 
court, and the university, places essentially distrustful of bold 
novelties. 

The idea of reaching the East by a voyage around the Af- 
rican continent had begun to assume consistency; but the 
vastly more significant idea, that the earth is a globe and ca- 
pable of being circumnavigated, had by no means become 
incorporated into the general intelligence of the age. The 
Portuguese navigators felt themselves safe as they crept along 
the African coast, venturing each voyage a few leagues far- 
ther, doubling a new headland, ascending some before unex- 
plored river, holding a palaver with some new tribe of the na- 
tive races. But to turn the prows of their vessels boldly to the 
west, to embark upon an ocean, not believed, in the popular 
geography of the day, to have an outer shore, to pass that 
bourne from which no traveller had ever returned, and from 
which experience had not taught that any traveller could re- 
turn, and thus to reach the East by sailing in a western direc- 
tion, — this was a conception which no human being is known 
to have formed before Columbus, and which he proposed to 
the governments of Italy, of Spain, of Portugal, and for a 



long time without success.- The state of science was not 
such as to enable men to discriminate between the improba- 
ble and untried on the one hand, and the impossible and ab- 
surd on the other. They looked upon Columbus as we did 
thirty years ago upon Captain Symmes. 

But the illustrious adventurer persevered. Sorrow and dis- 
appointment clouded his spirits, but did not shake his faith nor 
subdue his will. His well-instructed imagination had taken 
firm hold of the idea that the earth is a sphere. What 
seemed to the multitude even of the educated of that day a 
doubtful and somewhat mystical theory ; what appeared to 
the uninformed mass a monstrous paradox, contradicted by 
every step we take upon the broad, flat earth which we daily 
tread beneath our feet ; — that great and fruitful truth revealed 
itself to the serene intelligence of Columbus as a practical 
fact, on which he was willing to stake all he had, — character 
and life. And it deserves ever to be borne in mind, as the 
most illustrious example of the connection of scientific theory 
with great practical results, that the discovery of America, 
with all its momentous consequences to mankind, is owing 
to the distinct conception in the mind of Columbus of this 
single scientific proposition, — the terraqueous earth is a 
sphere. 

After years of fruitless and heart-sick solicitation, after offer- 
ing in effect to this monarch and to that monarch the gift of 
a hemisphere, the great discoverer touches upon a partial suc- 
cess. He succeeds, not in enlisting the sympathy of his coun- 
trymen at Gf€noa and Venice for a brave brother sailor ; not 
in giving a new direction to the spirit of maritime adventure 
which had so long prevailed in Portugal ; not in stimulating 
the commercial thrift of Henry the Seventh, or the pious 
ambition of the Catholic King. His sorrowful perseverance 
touched the heart of a noble princess, — worthy the throne 
which she adorned. The New World, which was just es- 
caping the subtle kingcraft of Ferdinand, was saved to Spain 
by the womanly compassion of Isabella. 



It is truly melancholy, however, to contemplate the 
wi-etched equipment, for which the most powerful princess in 
Christendom was ready to pledge her jewels. Floating cas- 
tles will soon be fitted out to convey the miserable natives of 
Africa to the golden shores of America, and towering galleons 
will be despatched to bring home the guilty treasures to 
Spain ; but three small vessels, two of which were without a 
deck, and neither of them probably exceeding the capacity of 
a pilot-boat, and even these impressed into the public service, 
compose the expedition, fitted out under royal patronage, to 
realize that magnificent conception in which the creative mind 
of Columbus had planted the germs of a new world. 

No chapter of romance equals the interest of this expedi- 
tion. The most fascinating of the works of fiction which 
have issued from the modern press have, to my taste, no at- 
traction compared with the pages in which the first voyage of 
Columbus is described by Robertson, and especially by our 
own Irving and Prescott, the last two enjoying the advantage 
over the great Scottish historian of possessing the lately dis- 
covered journals and letters of Columbus himself. The de- 
parture from Palos, where a few years before he had begged 
a morsel of bread and a cup of water for his way-worn child ; 
his final farewell to the Old World at the Canaries ; his en- 
trance upon the trade-winds, which then, for the first time, 
filled a European sail ; the portentous variation of the needle, 
never before observed; the fearful course westward and west- 
ward, day after day and night after night, over the unknown 
ocean ; the mutinous and ill-appeased crew; — at length, when 
hope had turned to despair in every heart but one, the tokens 
of land ; the cloud-banks on the western horizon ; the logs of 
drift-wood ; the fresh shrub floating with its leaves and berries ; 
the flocks of land-birds ; the shoals of fish that inhabit shallow 
water; the indescribable smell of the shore ; the mysterious pre- 
sentiment that ever goes before a great event ; — and, finally, 
on that ever memorable night of the 12th of October, 1492, the 
moving light spen by the sleepless eye of the great discoverer 



himself from the deck of the Santa Maria, and in the morn- 
ing the real, undoubted land, swelling up from the bosom of 
the deep, with its plains, and hills, and forests, and rocks, and 
streams, and strange, new races of men ; — these are incidents 
in which the authentic history of the discovery of our conti- 
nent excels the specious wonders of romance, as much as 
gold excels tinsel, or the sun in the heavens outshines that 
flickering taper. 

But it is no part of my purpose to dwell upon this inter- 
esting narrative, or to follow out this most wonderful of histo- 
ries, sinking as it soon did into a tale of sorrow for Columbus 
himself, and before long ending in one of the most frightful 
tragedies in the annals of the world. Such seems to be the 
law of humanity, that events the most desirable and achieve- 
ments the most important should, either in their inception or 
progress, be mixed up with disasters, crimes, and sorrows 
which it makes the heart sick to record. 

The discovery of America, I need hardly say, produced a 
vast extension of the territory of the power under whose au- 
spices the discovery was made. In contemplating this point, 
we encounter one of the most terrible mysteries in the 
history of our race. " Extension of territory ! " you are ready 
to exclaim ; " how could Spain acquire any territory by the 
fact that a navigator, sailing under her patronage, had landed 
upon one or two islands near the continent of America, and 
coasted for a few hundred miles along its shores ? These 
shores and islands are not a desert on which Columbus, like a 
Robinson Crusoe of a higher order, has landed and taken pos- 
session. They are occupied and settled, — crowded, even, with 
inhabitants, — subject to the government of their native chiefs ; 
and neither by inheritance, colonization, nor as yet by con- 
quest, has any human being in Europe a right to rule over 
them or to possess a square foot of their territory." Such are 
the facts of the case, and such, one would say, ought to be 
the law and equity of the case. But alas for the native chiefs 
and the native races ! Before he sailed from Spain, Colum- 



bus was furnished with a piece of parchment a foot and a 
half square, by Ferdinand and Isabella, creating him their 
Viceroy and High-Admiral in all the seas, islands, and con- 
tinents which he should discover, his heirs for ever to enjoy 
the same offices. The Viceroy of the absolute monarchs of 
Aragon and Castile ! 

Thus was America conquered before it was discovered. 
By the law of nations as then understood, (and I fear there is 
less change in its doctrines at the present day than we should 
be ready to think,) a sovereign right to the territory and gov- 
ernment of all newly discovered regions inhabited by heathen 
tribes was believed to vest in the Christian prince under whose 
auspices the discovery was made, subject to the ratification 
of the Pope, as the ultimate disposer of the kingdoms of the 
earth. Such was the law of nations, as then understood, in 
virtue of which, from the moment Columbus, on that memora- 
ble night to which I have alluded, caught, from the quarter- 
deck of the Santa Maria, the twinkling beams of a taper from 
the shores of San Salvador, all the territorial and political 
rights of its simple inhabitants were extinguished for ever. 
When on the following morning the keel of his vessel grated 
upon the much longed for strand, it completed, with more than 
electric speed, that terrible circuit which connected the isl- 
ands and the continent to the footstool of the Spanish throne. 
As he landed upon the virgin shore, its native inhabitants, 
could they have foreseen the future, would have felt, if I may 
presume thus to apply the words, that virtue had gone out of 
it for ever. With some of them the process was sharp and 
instantaneous, with others more gradual, but not less sure ; 
with some, even after nearly four centuries, it is still going on ; 
but with all it was an irrevocable doom. The wild and war- 
like, the indolent and semi-civilized, the bloody Aztec, the in- 
offensive Peruvian, the fierce Araucanian, — all fared alike ; 
a foreign rule and an iron yoke settled or is settling down 
upon their necks for ever. 

Such was the law of nations of that day, not enacted, how- 



9 

ever, by Spain. It was in reality the old principle of the 
right of the strongest, disguised by a pretext ; a colossal iron 
falsehood gilded over with the thin foil of a seeming truth. 
It was the same principle which prompted the eternal wars 
of the Greeks and Romans. Aristotle asserts, without quali- 
fication, that the Greeks had a perpetual right of war and con- 
quest against the barbarians, — that is, all the rest of the 
world ; and the pupil of Aristotle proclaimed this doctrine at 
the head of the Macedonian phalanx on the banks of the In- 
dus. The irruption of the barbarous races into Europe, dur- 
ing the centuries that preceded and followed Christianity, 
rested on as good a principle, — rather better, — the pretext 
only was varied ; although the Gauls and Goths did not prob- 
ably trouble themselves much about pretexts. They adopted 
rather the simple philosophy of the robber chieftain of the 
Scottish Highlands : — 

" Pent in this fortress of the North, 
Think'st thou we will not sally forth, 
To spoil the spoiler as we may, 
And from the robber rend the prey 1 " 

When the Mohammedan races rose to power, they claimed 
dominion over all who disbelieved the Koran. Conversion or 
extermination was the alternative which they offered to the 
world, and which was announced in letters of fire and blood 
from Spain to the Ganges. The states of Christian Europe 
did but retort the principle and the practice, when, in a series 
of crusades, kept up for more than three hundred years, they 
poured desolation over the West of Asia, in order to rescue 
the sepulchre of the Prince of Peace from the possession of 
unbelievers. 

Such were the principles of the public law and the practice 
under them, as they existed when the great discoveries of the 
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries took place. When the Por- 
tuguese began to push their adventures far to the south on 
the coast of Africa, in order to give to those principles the 
highest sanction, they procured of Pope Nicholas the Fifth, in 
2 



10 

1454, the grant of the right of sovereignty over all the heathen 
tribes, nations, and countries discovered or to be discovered 
by them, from Africa to India, and the exclusive title thus 
conferred was recognized by all the other nations of Chris- 
tendom. 

On the return of Columbus from his first voyage, the king 
of Spain, not to fall behind his neighbors in the strength of 
his title, lost no time in obtaining from Pope Alexander the 
Sixth a similar grant of all the heathen lands discovered by 
Columbus, or vi^hich might hereafter be discovered, in the west. 
To preclude as far as possible all conflict with Portugal, the 
famous line of demarcation was projected from the north to 
the south, a hundred leagues west of the Azores, cutting the 
earth into halves, like an apple, and, as far as the new dis- 
coveries were concerned, giving to the Spaniards all west of 
the line, and confirming all east of it to the Portuguese, in 
virtue of the grant already mentioned of Pope Nicholas the 
Fifth. 

I regret that want of time will not allow me to dwell upon 
the curious history of this line of demarcation, for the benefit 
of all states having boundary controversies, and especially 
our sister republics of Nicaragua and Costa Rica. It is suf- 
ficient to say, that, having had its origin in the papal bull just 
referred to of 1454, it remained a subject of dispute and col- 
lision for three hundred and sixty-one years, and was finally 
settled at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 ! 

The territorial extension of Portugal and Spain, which re- 
sulted ' from the discovery of America, was followed by the 
most extraordinary effects upon the commerce, the finances, 
and the politics generally, of those two countries, and through 
them of the world. The over-land trade to the East, the great 
commercial interest of the Middle Ages, was abandoned. 
The whole of South America, and a considerable part of North 
America, were, in the course of the sixteenth century, settled 
by those governments ; who organized in their Transatlantic 
possessions a colonial system of the most rigid and despotic 



11 

character, reflecting as far as was practicable in distant prov- 
inces beyond the sea the stern features of the mother coun- 
try. The precious metals, and a monopoly of the trade to the 
East, were the great objects to be secured. Aliens were for- 
bidden to enter the American viceroyalties ; none but a con- 
traband trade was carried on by foreigners at the seaports. 
To prevent this trade, a severe right of search was instituted 
along the entire extent of the coasts, on either ocean. I have 
recently had an opportunity, in another place, to advert to the 
effects of this system upon the international relations of Eu- 
rope.* Native subjects could emigrate to these vast colonial 
possessions only with the permission of the government. 
Liberty of speech and of the press was vmknown. Instead 
of affording an asylum to persons dissenting from the religion 
of the state, conformity of belief was, if possible, enforced 
more rigidly in the colonies than in the mother country. No 
relaxation in this respect has, I believe, taken place in the 
remaining colonies of Spain even to the present day. As for 
the aboriginal tribes, after the first work of extermination was 
over, a remnant was saved from destruction by being reduced 
to a state of predial servitude. The dejected and spiritless 
posterity of the warlike tribes that offered no mean resistance 
to Cortes and Pizarro, are now the hewers of wood and the 
drawers of water to Mexico and Peru. In a word, from the 
extreme southern point of Patagonia to the northernmost limit 
of New Mexico, I am not aware that any thing hopeful was 
done for human improvement by either of the European 
crowns which added these vast domains to their territories. 

If this great territorial extension was fruitless of beneficial 
consequences to America, it was not less so to the mother 
countries. For Spain it was the commencement of a period, 
not of prosperity, but of decline. The rapid influx of the pre- 
cious metals, in the absence of civil liberty and of just prin- 



* Speech on the affairs of Central America, in the Senate of the United States, 
21st of March, 1853. 



12 

ciples and institutions of intercourse and industry, was pro- 
ductive of manifold evils ; and from the reign of Philip the 
Second, if not of Charles the Fifth, the Spanish monarchy 
began to sink from its haughty position at the head of the 
European family. I do not ascribe this downfall exclusively 
to the cause mentioned ; but the possession of the two Indies, 
with all their treasures, did nothing to arrest, accelerated even, 
the progress of degeneracy. Active causes of decline no 
doubt existed at home ; and of these the Inquisition was the 

chief. 

" There was the weight that pulled her down." 

The spirit of intolerance and persecution, the reproach and 
scandal of all countries and all churches, Protestant as well as 
Catholic, (not excepting the Pilgrim Fathers of New Eng- 
land,) found an instrument in the Holy Office in Spain, in 
the sixteenth century, such as it never possessed in any other 
age or country. It was not merely Jews and heretics whom 
it bound to the stake; it kindled a slow, unquenchable fire 
in the heart of Castile and Leon. The horrid atrocities 
practised at home and abroad, not only in the Nether- 
lands, but in every city of the mother country, cried to 
Heaven for vengeance upon Spain; nor could she escape 
it. She intrenched herself behind the eternal Cordilleras ; 
she took to herself the wings of the morning, and dwelt in 
the uttermost parts of the sea; but even there the arm of 
retribution laid hold of her, and the wrongs of both hemi- 
spheres were avenged in her degeneracy and fall. 

But let us pass on to the next century, during which events 
of the utmost consequence followed each other in rapid suc- 
cession, and the foundations of institutions destined to influ- 
ence the fortunes of Christendom were laid by humble men, 
who little comprehended their own work. In the course of 
the seventeenth century, the French and English took posses- 
sion of all that part of North America which was not pre- 
occupied by the Spaniards. The French entered by the 
St. Lawrence ; followed that noble artery to the heart of 



13 

the continent ; traced the great lakes to their parent rivulets 
and weeping fountains; descended the Mississippi. Mira- 
cles of humble and unavailing heroism were performed by 
their gallant adventurers and pious missionaries in the depths 
of our Western wilderness. The English stretched along the 
coast. The geographer would have pronounced that the 
French, in appropriating to themselves the mighty basins of 
the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence, had got possession of 
the better part of the continent. But it was an attempt to 
compose the second volume of the " Fortunes of America," 
in advance of the first. This it was ordained should be 
written at Jamestown and Plymouth. The French, though 
excelling all other nations of the world in the art of com- 
municating for temporary purposes with savage tribes, seem, 
still more than the Spaniards, to be destitute of the august 
skill required to found new states.* I do not know that 
there is such a thing in the world as a colony of France 
growing up into a prosperous commonwealth. Half a mil- 
lion of French peasants in Lower Canada, tenaciously ad- 
hering to the manners and customs which their fathers 
brought from Normandy two centuries ago, and a third 
part of that number of planters of French descent in Louisi- 
ana, are all that is left to bear living witness to the amazing 
fact, that in the middle of the last century France was the 
mistress of the better half of North America. 

It was on the Atlantic coast, and in the colonies originally 
planted or soon acquired by England, that the gi-eat work 
of the seventeenth century was performed, — slowly, toilsome- 
ly, effectively. A mighty work for America and mankind, of 
which even we, fond and proud of it as we are, do but 
faintly guess the magnitude ! It could hardly be said, at the 
time, to prosper in any of its parts. It yielded no return to 
the pecuniary capital invested. The political relations of the 

* " La France saura mal coloniser et n'y rcussira qu'avcc peine." — Victor 
Hugo, Le Rhin, Tom. II. p. 280. 



14 

colonies from the first were those of encroachment -and re- 
sistance ; and even the moral principle, as far as there was 
one, on which they were founded, was not consistently car- 
ried out. There was conflict with the savages, war with 
the French and Spaniards, jarring and feud between neigh- 
boring colonies, persecution of dissenting individuals and 
sects, perpetual discord with the crown and the proprieta- 
ries. Yet, in the main and on the whole, the work was 
done. Things that did not work singly worked together; 
or if they did not work together, they worked by reaction 
and collision. Feeble germs of settlement grew to the con- 
sistency of powerful colonies ; habits of civil government 
rooted themselves in a soil that was continually stirred by 
political agitation ; the frame of future republics knit itself, 
as it were in embryo, under a monarchical system of colonial 
rule ; till in the middle of the eighteenth century the ap- 
proach of mighty changes began to be dimly foreseen by 
gifted spirits. A faint streak of purple light blushed along 
the eastern sky. 

Two things worth mentioning contributed to the result. 
One was the absence of the precious metals. The British 
colonies were rich in the want of gold. As the abundance 
of gold and silver in Mexico and Peru contributed, in vari- 
ous ways, to obstruct the prosperity of the Spanish colonies, 
the want of them acted not less favorably here. In the first 
settlement of a savage wilderness the golden attraction is too 
powerful for the ordinary routine of life. It produces a fever- 
ish excitement unfavorable to the healthy growth and calm 
action of the body politic. Although California has from 
the first had the advantage of being incorporated into a 
stable political system, of which, as a sister State, she forms 
an integral part, it is quite doubtful whether, looking to her 
permanent well-being, the gold is to be a blessing to her. 
It will hasten her settlement; but that would at any rate 
have advanced with great rapidity. One of the most in- 
tellectual men in this country, the author of one of the most 



15 

admirable works in our language, I mean " Two Years be- 
fore the Mast," once remarked to me, that " California would 
be one of the finest couutries in the world to live in, if it 
were not for the gold." 

The other circumstance which operated in the most 
favorable manner upon the growth of the Anglo-American 
colonies was the fact, that they were called into existence 
less by the government than the people ; that they were 
mainly settled, not by bodies of colonists, but by individual 
immigrants. The crown gave charters of government and 
grants of land, and a considerable expenditure was made 
by some of the companies and proprietors who received these 
grants ; but upon the whole, the United States were settled 
by individuals, — the adventurous, resolute, high-spirited, and 
in many cases persecuted men and women, who sought a 
home and a refuge beyond the sea ; and such was the state 
of Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, that 
it furnished a succession of victims of a long series of politi- 
cal and religious disasters and persecutions, who found, one 
after another, a safe and a congenial retreat in some one of 
the American colonies. 

This noble theme has been treated with a beauty and a 
power, by one whom I need not name in this presence, (the 
historian of the United States,) which, without impairing their 
authenticity, have converted the severe pages of our history 
into a magnificent Odyssey of national adventure. I can 
but glance at the dates. The first settlement, that of Vir- 
ginia, was commenced in the spirit of worldly enterprise, 
with no slight dash, however, of chivalry and romance on 
the part of its leader. In the next generation this colony 
became the favorite resort of the loyal cavaliers and gentle- 
men who were disgusted by the austerities of the English 
Commonwealth, or fell under its suspicion. In the mean 
time. New England was founded by those who suffered the 
penalties of non-conformity. The mighty change of 1640 
stopped the tide of emigration to New England, but re- 



16 

cruited Virginia with those who were disaffected to Crom- 
well. In 1624 the island of Manhattan, of which you have 
perhaps heard, and if not, you will find its history related 
with learning, judgment, and good taste, by a loyal descend- 
ant of its early settlers (Mr. Brodhead), was purchased of 
the Indians for twenty-four dollars ; a sum of money, by the 
way, which seems rather low for twenty-two thousand acres 
of land, including the site of this great metropolis, but which 
w^ould, if put out at compound interest at seven per cent, in 
1624, not perhaps fall so very much below even its pres- 
ent value ; though I admit that a dollar for a thousand acres 
is quite cheap for choice spots on the Fifth Avenue. Mary- 
land next attracted those who adhered to the ancient faith of 
the Christian world. New Jersey and Pennsylvania were 
mainly settled by persecuted Quakers ; but the latter offered 
an asylum to the Germans whom the sword of Louis the 
Fourteenth drove from the Palatinate. The French Hugue- 
nots, driven out by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 
scattered themselves from Massachusetts to Carolina. The 
Dutch and Swedish settlements on the Hudson and the 
Delaware provided a kindred home for such of their country- 
men as desired to try the fortune of the New World. The 
Whigs of England who rebelled against James the Second 
in 1685, and were sent to the Transatlantic colonies, lived 
long enough to meet in exile the adherents of his son, who 
rebelled against George the First, in 1715. The oppressed 
Protestants of Salzburg came with General Oglethorpe to 
Georgia ; and the Highlanders who fought for Charles Ed- 
ward, in 1745, were deported by hundreds to North Carolina. 
They were punished by being sent from their bleak hills and 
sterile moors to a land of abundance and liberty ; they were 
banished from oatmeal porridge to meat twice a day. The 
Gaelic language is still spoken by their descendants, and 
thousands of their kindred at the present day would no 
doubt gladly share their exile. 

There is no doubt that the hardships which awaited the 



17 

emigrant at that early day were neither few nor slight, though 
greatly exaggerated for want of information. Goldsmith, in 
" The Deserted Village," published in 1769, gives us a some- 
what amusing picture of the state of things as he supposed it 
to exist beyond the ocean at that time. As his local allusion 
is to Georgia, it is probable that he formed his impressions 
from the accounts which were published at London about 
the middle of the last century by some of the discontented 
settlers of that colony. Goldsmith, being well acquainted 
with General Oglethorpe, was likely enough to have had his 
attention called to the subject. Perhaps -you will allow me 
to enliven my dull prose with a few lines of his beautiful po- 
etry. After describing the sufferings of the poor in London 
at that time, reverting to the condition of the inhabitants of 
his imaginary Auburn, and asking whether they probably 
shared the woes he had just painted, he thus answers his 
question : — 

" Ah, no ! To distant climes, a dreary scene, 
Where half the convex world intrudes between, 
Through torrid tracts with fainting steps they go, 
Where wild Altama murmurs to their woe. 
Far different there from all that charmed before, 
The various terrors of that horrid shore : 
Those blazing suns that dart a downward ray, 
And fiercelj' shed intolerable day ; 
Those matted woods, where birds forget to sing, 
But silent bats in drowsy clusters cling ; 
Those poisonous fields with rank luxuriance crowned, 
WHiere the dark scorpion gathers death around, — 
Where, at each step, the stranger fears to wake 
The rattling terrors of the vengeful snake, — 
Where crouching tigers wait their hapless prey. 
And savage men moi'e murderous still than they ; 
While oft in whirls the mad tornado flies, 
Mingling the ravaged landscape with the skies." 

In this rather uninviting sketch, it must be confessed that 
it is not easy to recognize the natural features of that thriv- 
ing State, which possesses at the present day a thousand 
miles of railroad, and which, by her rapidly increasing pop- 



18 

ulation, her liberal endowment of colleges, schools, and 
churches, and all the other social institutions of a highly 
improved community, is fast earning the name of the " Em- 
pire State " of the South. 

After repeating these lines, it is scarcely necessary to say 
that there was much ignorance and exaggeration prevailing 
in Europe as to the state of things in America. But a few 
years after Goldsmith's poem appeared, an event occurred 
which aroused and fixed the attention of the world. The re- 
volt of the Colonies in 1775, the Declaration of Independence 
in 1776, the battles of the Revolutionary war, the alliance 
with France, the acknowledgment of American Independence 
by the treaty of 1783, the establishment of a great federative 
republic, the illustrious career of Lafayette, the European rep- 
utation of Franklin, and, above all, the character of Wash- 
ington, gave to the United States a great and brilliant name 
in the family of nations. Thousands in every part of Europe 
then probably heard of America, with any distinct impres- 
sions, for the first time ; and they now heard of it as a region 
realizing the wildest visions. Hundreds in every walk of life 
began to resort to America, and especially ardent young men, 
who were dissatisfied with the political condition of Europe. 
Among these was your late venerable President, Albert Gal- 
latin, one of the most eminent men of the last generation, 
who came to this country before he attained his majority ; 
and the late celebrated Sir Isambert Brunei, the architect of 
the Thames Tunnel. He informed me that he became a citi- 
zen of the State of New York before the adoption of the Fed- 
eral Constitution, and that he made some surveys to ascertain 
the practicability of the great work which afterwards united 
the waters of Lake Erie with the waters of the Atlantic, and 
gave immortality to the name of your Clinton. 

Before the Revolution, the great West was shut even to 
the subjects of England. A royal proclamation of 1763 for- 
bade the extension of the settlements in North America be- 
yond the Ohio. But without such a prohibition, the still 



19 

unbroken power of the Indian tribes would have prevented 
any such extension. The successful result of the Revolution- 
ary war did not materially alter the state of things in this 
respect. The native tribes were still formidable, and the Brit- 
ish posts in the Northwestern Territory were retained. So 
little confidence was placed in the value of a title to land, 
even within the limits of the State of New York, that the 
enterprising citizens of Massachusetts, Messrs. Gorham and 
Phelps, who bought six millions of acres of land on the Gen- 
esee River, shortly after the Peace, for a few cents the acre, 
were obliged to abandon the greater part of the purchase from 
the difficulty of finding under-purchasers enough to enable 
them to meet the first instalments. 

On one occasion, when Judge Gorham was musing in a 
state of mental depression on the failure of this magnificent 
speculation, he was visited by a friend and townsman, who 
had returned from a journey to Canandaigua, then just laid 
out. This friend tried to cheer the Judge with a bright vis- 
ion of the future growth of Western New York. Kindling 
with his theme, he pointed to a son of Judge Gorham, who 
was in the room, and added, " You and I shall not live to see 
the day, but that lad, if he reaches threescore years and ten, 
will see a daily stage-coach running as far west as Canandai- 
gua ! " That lad is still living. What he has seen in the 
shape of travel and conveyance in the State of New York, 
it is not necessary before this audience to say. 

It was the adoption of the Constitution of the United States, 
in 1789, which gave stability to the Union and confidence to 
the people. This was the Promethean fire, which kindled 
the body politic into vital action. It created a national force. 
The Indians on the southwest were pacified. On the north- 
western frontier the troops of the general government were at 
first defeated ; but after the victory of Wayne, and the peace 
of Greeneville, in 1795, the British posts were surrendered, 
and the tide of emigration began to pour in. It was rather, 
however, from the older States than from foreign countries. 



20 

The extensive region northwest of the Ohio had already re- 
ceived its political organization as a territory of the United 
States by the ever-memorable Ordinance of 1787. 

While Providence was thurs opening on this continent the 
broadest region that ever was made accessible to human prog- 
ress, want, or adventure, it happened that the kingdoms of 
Europe were shaken by the terrible convulsions incident to 
the French Revolution. France herself first, and afterwards 
the countries overrun by her revolutionary armies, poured 
forth their children by thousands. I believe there are no offi- 
cial returns of the number of immigrants to the United States 
at the time, but it was very large. Among them was M. de 
Talleyrand, the celebrated minister of every government in 
France, from that of the Directory, in 1797, to that of Louis 
Philippe, in whose reign he died. I saw at Peale's Museum, 
in Philadelphia, the original oath of allegiance, subscribed by 
him in 1794.* Louis Philippe himself emigrated to this 
country, where he passed three years, and is well remembered 
by many persons still living. He habitually spoke with grat- 
itude of the kindness which he experienced in every part of 
the Union. 

As yet, no acquisition of territory had been made by the 
United States beyond the limits of the British colonies ; but 
in 1803 a most important step was taken in the purchase of 



* Since this lecture was delivered, I have been favored with a copy of this 
paper by Edward D. Ingraham, Esq., of Philadelphia. It is in the following 
words : — 

"I, Charles Maurice Talleyrand Perigord, formerly Administrator of the Depart- 
ment of Paris, son of Joseph Daniel de Talleyrand Perigord, a General of the 
Armies of France, born at Paris and arrived at Philadelphia from London, do 
swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to the Commonwealth of Penn- 
sylvania and to the United States of America, and that I will not at any time wil- 
fully and knowingly do any matter or thing prejudicial to the freedom and inde- 
jiendence thereof. 

" Ch. Mac. de Talleyrand Pebigobd. 
" Sworn tlie 19th May, 1794, 

Before Mattii. Ci.akkson, Maipi-y 



21 

Louisiana, by which our possessions were extended, though 
with an unsettled boundary both on the south and the 
north, to the Pacific Ocean. The war in 1812 reduced the 
Indian tribes in the Northwestern States; and the campaigns 
of General Jackson a few years later produced the same 
effect on the southern frontier. Florida was acquired by 
treaty from Spain in 1819 ; and the Indians in Georgia, 
Alabama, and Mississippi were removed to the west of the 
river Mississippi ten or twelve years later. Black Hawk's 
war in Wisconsin took place in 1833, and a series of Indian 
treaties, both before and after that event, extinguished the 
Indian title to all the land east of the Mississippi, and to con- 
siderable tracts west of that river. Texas was annexed to 
the Union in 1845, and in 1848 New Mexico and California 
came into our possession. 

I have, as you perceive, run rapidly over these dates, com- 
pressing into one paragraph the starting-points in the history 
of future commonwealths, simply in their bearing on the 
subject of immigration. These acquisitions, not inferior in ex- 
tent to all that there was solid in the Roman conquests, have 
resulted in our possession of a zone of territory of the width 
of twenty degrees of latitude, stretching from ocean to ocean, 
and nearly equal in extent to the whole of Europe.* It is all 
subject to the power of the United States ; a portion of it has 
attained the civilization of the Old World, while other por- 
tions shade off through all degrees of culture, to the log-house 
of the frontier settler, the cabin of the trapper, and the wig- 
wam of the savage. Within this vast domain there are mil- 
lions of acres of fertile land, to be purchased at moderate 
prices, according to its position and its state of improvement, 
and there are hundreds of millions of acres in a state of 
nature, and gradually selling at the government price of a 
dollar and a quarter per acre. 



* Square miles in the United States, 3,260,073 ; in Europe, 3,700,971 . — American 
Almanac for 1853, pp. 315 and 316. 



22 

It is this which most strikes the European imagination. 
The Old World is nearly all appropriated by individuals. 
There are public domains in most foreign countries, but of 
comparatively small amount, and mostly forests. With this 
exception, every acre of land in Europe is private property, and 
in such countries as England, the Netherlands, France, Germa- 
ny, and Italy, what little changes hands is sold only at a high 
price. I presume the number of landholders in England is 
far less than in the State of New York. In the course of the 
French Revolution the land has been greatly divided and sub- 
divided in France and in Germany, and is now held in small 
farms ; but owing to the limited quantity of purchasable land, 
these farms, when sold, are sold only at high prices. Gener- 
ally speaking, the mass of the inhabitants of Europe regard 
the ability to hold and occupy a considerable landed property 
as the <summit of human fortune. The suggestion that there 
is a country beyond the ocean, where fertile land is to be pur- 
chased, in any quantity, at a dollar and a quarter per acre, 
and that dollar and a quarter to be earned in many parts of the 
country by the labor of a single day, strikes them as the tales 
of Aladdin's lamp or Ali Baba's cave would strike us, if we 
thought they were true. They forget the costs and sacrifices 
of leaving home, the ocean to be traversed, the weary pilgrim- 
age in the land of strangers after their arrival. They see 
nothing with the mind's eye but the " land of promise "; they 
reflect upon nothing but the fact, that there is a region on the 
earth's surface where a few days' unskilled labor will purchase 
the fee-simple of an ample farm. 

Such an attraction would be irresistible under any circum- 
stances to the population of an old country, where, as I have 
just said, the land is all appropriated, and to be purchased, 
in any considerable quantity, only at prices which put its 
acquisition beyond the thought of the masses. But this is 
but half the tale. It must not be forgotten that in this ancient 
and venerable Europe, whose civilization is the growth of two 
thousand years, where some of the luxurious refinements of 



23 

life are carried to a perfection of which we have scarcely an idea 
in this country, a considerable part of the population, even in 
the most prosperous regions, pass their lives in a state but one 
remove from starvation, — poorly fed, poorly clothed, poorly 
housed, without education, without political privileges, with- 
out moral culture. The average wages of the agricultural 
laborer in England were estimated a year ago at 9^. 6^. ster- 
ling — about ^ 2.37^ — per week. The condition of the work- 
ing population on the continent of Europe is in no degree 
better, if as good. They eat but little animal food either in 
England or on the Continent. We form romantic notions at a 
distance of countries that abound in wine and oil ; but in the 
best governed states of Italy, — in Tuscany, for instance, — the 
peasantry, though they pass their lives in the vineyard and the 
olive-orchard, consume the fruit of neither. I have seen the 
Tuscan peasants, unable to bear the cost of the most ordinary 
wine from the vineyards in which their cottages are embow- 
ered, and which can be bought at retail for a cent a flask, pour- 
ing water over the grape-skins as they come from the press, 
and making that their beverage. 

Even for persons in comparatively easy circumstances in 
Europe, there are strong inducements to emigrate to America. 
Most of the governments are arbitrary, the taxes are oppres- 
sive, the exactions of military service onerous in the extreme. 
Add to all this the harassing insecurity of life. For sixty 
or seventy years the Continent has been one wide theatre of 
scarcely intermitted convulsion. Every country in it has been 
involved in war ; there is scarcely one that has not passed 
through a revolution. We read of events like these in the 
newspapers, we look upon them with curiosity as articles of 
mere intelligence, or they awaken images of our own revolu- 
tion, which we regard only with joyous associations. Far dif- 
ferent the state of things in crowded Europe, of which the fair- 
est fields are trampled in every generation by mighty armies 
into bloody mire! Dazzled by the brilliancy of the military 
exploits of which we read at a safe distance, we forget the 



24 

anxieties of those who grow up within the sound of the can- 
non'vS roar, whose prospects in life are ruined, their business 
broken up, their little accumulations swept away by the bank- 
ruptcy of governments or the general paralysis of the industry 
of the country, their sons torn from them by ruthless conscrip- 
tions, the means of educating and bringing up their families 
consumed in a • day by disastrous emergencies. Terrified by 
the recent experience or the tradition of these miseries, thou- 
sands emigrate to the land of promise, flying before, not 
merely the presence, but the " rumor of war," which the Great 
Teacher places on a level with the reality. 

Ever and anon some sharp specific catastrophe gives an in- 
tense activity to emigration. When France, in the lowest 
depth of her Revolution, plunged to a lower depth of suffering 
and crime, when the Reign of Terror was enthroned, and when 
every thing in any way conspicuous, whether for station, 
wealth, talent, or service, of every age and of either sex, from 
the crowned monarch to the gray-haired magistrate and the 
timid maiden, was brought to the guillotine, hundreds of 
thousands escaped at once from the devoted kingdom. The 
convulsions of San Domingo drove most of the European 
population of that island to the United States. But be- 
yond every thing else which has been witnessed in modern 
times, the famine which prevailed a few years since in Ireland 
gave a terrific impulse to emigration. Not less, probably, 
than one million of her inhabitants left her shores within five 
years. The population of this island, as highly favored in the 
gifts of nature as any spot on the face of the earth, has actu- 
ally diminished more than 1,800,000 since the famine year;* 
the only example, perhaps, in history, of a similar result in a 
country not visited by foreign war or civil convulsion. The 
population ought, in the course of nature, to have increased 
within ten years by at least that amount ; and in point of fact, 
between 1840 and 1850, our own population increased by 
more than six millions. 



* Lomhn Quarterhj Review for Decemlicr, 1851, p. 191. 



25 

This prodigious increase of the population of the United 
States is partly owing to the emigration from foreign coun- 
tries, which has taken place under the influence of the causes 
general and specific, to which I have alluded. Of late years, 
from three to four hundred thousand immigrants are registered 
at the several custom-houses, as arriving in this country in the 
course of a year. It is probable that a third as many more 
enter by the Canadian frontier. Not much less than two 
millions of immigrants are supposed to have entered the 
United States in the last ten years ; and it is calculated that 
there are living at the present day in the United States five 
millions of persons, foreigners who have immigrated since 
1790, and their descendants. 

There is nothing in the annals of mankind to be compared 
to this ; but there is a series of great movements which may 
be contrasted with it. In the period of a thousand years, 
which began about three or four hundred years before our 
Saviour, the Roman republic and empire were from time to 
time invaded by warlike races from the North and East, who 
burst with overwhelming force upon the South and West of 
Europe, and repeatedly carried desolation to the gates of 
Rome. These multitudinous invaders were not armies of 
men, they were in reality nations of hostile emigrants. They 
came with their wives, with their " young barbarians," wath 
their Scythian cavalry, and their herds of cattle ; and they 
came with no purpose of going away. The animus manendi 
was made up before they abandoned their ice-clad homes ; 
they left their Arctic allegiance behind them. They found 
the sunny banks of the Arno and the Rhone more pleasant 
than those of the Don and the Volga. Unaccustomed to the 
sight of any tree more inviting than the melancholy fir and 
the stunted birch, its branches glittering with snowy crystals, — 
brought up under a climate where the generous fruits are un- 
known, — these children of the North were not so much fasci- 
nated as bewildered " in the land of the citron and myrtle " ; 
they gazed with delighted astonishment at the spreading elm, 
4 



26 

festooned with Falernian clusters ; they clutched, with a kind 
of frantic joy, at the fruit of the fig-tree and the olive ; — 
at the melting peach, the luscious plum, the golden orange, 
and the pomegranate, whose tinted cheek outblushes every 
thing but the living carnation of youthful love. 

" With grim delight the brood of winter view 
A brighter day and heavens of azure hue, 
Scent the new fragrance of the breathing rose, 
And quaff the pendent vintage as it grows." 

By the fortune of war, single detachments and even mighty 
armies frequently suffered defeat ; but their place was imme- 
diately taken by new hordes, which fell upon declining Rome 
as the famished wolves in one of Catlin's pictures fall upon 
an aged buffalo in our Western prairies. The imperial mon- 
ster, powerful even in his decrepitude, would often scatter their 
undisciplined array with his iron tusks, and trample them by 
thousands under his brazen feet; but when he turned back, 
torn and bleeding, to his seven hills, tens of thousands came 
howling from the Northern forests, who sprang at his throat 
and buried their fangs in his lacerated side. Wherever they 
conquered, and in the end they conquered everywhere, they 
established themselves on the soil, invited new-comers, and 
from their union with the former inhabitants, the nations of 
the South and West of Europe, at the present day, for the 
most part, trace their descent. 

We know but little of the numbers thus thrown in upon 
the Roman republic and empire in the course of eight or ten 
centuries. They were, no doubt, greatly exaggerated by the 
panic fear of the inhabitants; and the pride of the Roman 
historians would lead them to magnify the power before 
which their own legions had so often quailed. But when we 
consider the difficulty of subsisting a large number of per- 
sons in a march through an unfriendly country, and this at 
a time when much of the now cultivated portion of Europe 
was covered with forest and swamp, I am disposed to think 
that the hosts which for a succession of centuries overran 



27 

the Roman empire did not in the aggregate exceed in num- 
bers the immigrants that have arrived in the United States 
since 1790. In other words, I am inclined to believe, that 
within the last sixty years the Old World has poured in upon 
the United States a number of persons as great, with their 
natural increase, as Asia sent into Europe in these armed 
migrations of barbarous races. 

Here, of course, the parallel ends. The races that invaded 
Europe came to lay waste and to subjugate ; the hosts that 
cross the Atlantic are peaceful immigrants. The former 
burst upon the Roman empire, and by oft-repeated strokes 
beat it to the ground. The immigrants to America from all 
countries come to cast in their lot with the native citizens, 
and to share with us this great inheritance of civil and re- 
ligious liberty. The former were ferocious barbarians, half 
clad in skins, speaking strange tongues, worshipping strang»e 
gods with bloody rites. The latter are the children of the 
countries from which the first European settlers of this con- 
tinent proceeded, and belong, with us, to the great common 
family of Christendom. The former destroyed the culture 
of the ancient world, and it was only after a thousand years 
that a better civilization grew up from its ruins. The mil- 
lions who have established themselves in America within 
sixty years are, from the moment of their arrival, gradually 
absorbed into the mass of the population, conforming to the 
laws and moulding themselves to the manners of the country, 
and contributing their share to its prosperity and strength. 

It is a curious coincidence, that, as the first mighty wave 
of the hostile migi'ation that burst upon Europe before the 
time of our Saviour consisted of tribes belonging to the 
great Celtic race, the remains of which, identified by their 
original dialect, are still found in Brittany, in Wales, in the 
Highlands of Scotland, and especially in Ireland, so by far 
the greater portion of the new and friendly immigration to 
the United States consists of persons belonging to the same 
ardent, true-hearted, and too often oppressed race. I have 



28 

heard, in the villages of Wales and the Highlands of Scotland, 
the Gospel preached in substantially the same language in 
which Brennus uttered his haughty summons to Rome, and 
in which the mystic songs of the Druids were chanted in 
the depths of the primeval forests of France and England, 
in the time of Julius Caesar. It is still spoken by thousands 
of Scotch, Welsh, and Irish immigrants, in all parts of the 
United States.* 

This great Celtic race is one of the most remarkable that 
has appeared in history. Whether it belongs to that ex- 
tensive Indo-European family of nations, which, in ages be- 
fore the dawn of history, took up a line of march in two 
columns from Lower India, and, moving westward by both a 
northern and a southern route, finally diffused itself over 
Western Asia, Northern Africa, and the greater part of Eu- 
rope ; or whether, as others suppose, the Celtic race belongs 

* A learned and friendly correspondent, of Welsh origin, is of opinion that I 
have fallen into a " gross error, in classing the Irish, Welsh, and Scotch as one 
race of people, or Celts, whose language is the same. The slightest acquaintance," 
he adds, " with the Welsh and Irish languages would convince you that they were 
totally diflferent. A Welshman cannot understand one word of Irish, neither can 
the latter understand one word of Welsh." 

In a popular view of the subject this may be correct, in like manner as the 
Anglo-Saxon, the Teutonic, and Scandinavian races would, in a popular use of the 
terms, be considered as distinct races, speaking languages mutually unintelligible. 
But the etymologist regards their languages as substantially the same ; and ethno- 
graphically these nations belong to one and the same stock. 

There are certainly many points, in reference to the ancient history of the Celts, 
on which learned men greatly differ, and at which it was impossible that I should 
even glance in the superficial allusions which my limits admitted. But there is no 
point on which ethnographers are better agreed, than that the Bretons, Welsh, 
Irish, and Highland Scotch belong to the Celtic race, representing, no doubt, differ- 
ent national families, which acquired each its distinctive dialect at a very early 
period. 

Dr. Prichard (the leading authority on questions of this kind), after comparing 
the remains of the ancient Celtic language, as far as they can now be traced in 
proper names, says : ' We must hence conclude that the dialect of the ancient 
Gauls was nearly allied to the Welsh, and much more remotely related to the Erse 
and Gaelic.'' — Researches into the Phjjsical Histori/ of Mankind, Vol. III. p. 135. 
See also Latham's English Lamjucif/c, p. 74. 



29 

to a still older stock, and was itself driven down upon the 
South and into the West of Europe by the overwhelming 
force of the Indo-Europeans, is a question which we have no 
time at present to discuss. However it may be decided, it 
would seem that for the first time, as far as we are acquainted 
with the fortunes of this interesting race, they have found 
themselves in a really prosperous condition in this country. 
Driven from the soil in the West of Europe, to which their 
fathers clung for two thousand years, they have at length, 
and for the first time in their entire history, found a real 
home in a land of strangers. Having been told, in the 
frightful language of political economy, that at the daily 
table which Nature spreads for the human family there is 
no cover laid for them in Ireland, they have crossed the 
ocean, to find occupation, shelter, and bread on a foreign 
but friendly soil. 

This " Celtic Exodus," as it has been aptly called, is to 
all the parties immediately connected with it one of the most 
important events of the day. To the emigrants themselves 
it may be regarded as a passing from death to life. It will 
benefit Ireland by reducing a surplus population, and restor- 
ing a sounder and juster relation of capital and labor. It 
will benefit the laboring classes in England, where wages 
have been kept down to the starvation-point by the struggle 
between the native population and the inhabitants of the 
sister island for that employment and food, of which there 
is not enough for both. This benefit will extend from 
England to ourselves, and will lessen the pressure of that 
competition which our labor is obliged to sustain, with the 
ill-paid labor of Europe. In addition to all this, the constant 
influx into America of stout and efficient hands supplies 
the greatest want in a new country, which is that of labor, 
gives value to land, and facilitates the execution of every 
species of private enterprise and public work. 

I am not insensible to the temporary inconveniences which 
are to be offset against these advantages, on both sides of the 



30 

water. Much suffering attends the emigrant there, on his 
passage, and after his arrival. It is possible that the value 
of our native labor may have been depressed by too sudden 
and extensive a supply from abroad ; and it is certain that 
our asylums and almshouses are crowded with foreign in- 
mates, and that the resources of public and private benevo- 
lence have been heavily drawn upon. These are considera- 
ble evils, but they have perhaps been exaggerated. 

It must be remembered, in the first place, that the immi- 
gration daily pouring in from Europe is by no means a pauper 
immigration. On the contrary, it is already regarded with 
apprehension abroad, as occasioning a great abstraction of 
capital. How the case may be in Great Britain and Ire- 
land, I have seen no precise statement ; but it is asserted on 
apparently good grounds, that the consumption and abstrac- 
tion of capital caused by immigration from Germany amounts 
annually to twenty millions of rix-dollars, or fifteen millions 
of our currency.* 

No doubt, foreign immigation is attended with an influx 
of foreign pauperism. In reference to this, I believe your 
system of public relief is better here in New York than ours 
in Massachusetts, in which, however, we are making impor- 
tant changes. It is said, that, owing to some defect in our 
system, or its administration, we support more than our 
share of needy foreigners. They are sent in upon us from 
other States. New York, as the greatest seaport, must be 
exposed also to more than her proportionate share of the 
burden. However the evil arises, it may no doubt be miti- 
gated by judicious legislation; and in the mean time Massa- 
chusetts and New York might do a worse thing with a por- 



* In an instructive article relative to the German emigration in Otto Htlbner's 
Jahrbuch filr Volkswirthschqfl und Statistik, the numbers who emigrated from 
Germany, from 1846 to 1851 inclusive, are estimated to have amounted to an 
annual average of 96,676, and the amount of capital abstracted by them from the 
country to an average of 19,370,333 rix-dollars (about fifteen million Spanish 
dollars) per annum. 



31 

tion of their surplus means than feed the hungry, clothe the 
naked, give a home to the stranger, and kindle the spark of 
reason in the mind of the poor foreign lunatic, even though 
that lunatic may have been (as I am ashamed, for the 
credit of humanity, to say has happened) set on shore in 
the night from a coasting-vessel, and found in the morning 
in the fields, half dead with cold, and hunger, and fright. 

But you. say, " They are foreigners." Well, do we owe no 
duties to foreigners ? What was the founder of Virginia, 
when a poor Indian girl threw herself between him and the 
war-club of her father, and saved his life at the risk of her 
own ? What were the Pilgrim Fathers, when the friendly 
savage, if we must call him so, met them with his little vocab- 
ulary of kindness, learned among the fishermen on the Grand 
Bank, — " Welcome, Englishmen " ? " They are foreigners." 
And suppose they are ? Was not the country all but ready, 
a year or two ago, to plunge into a conflict with the military 
despotisms of the East of Europe, in order to redress the 
wrongs of the oppressed races who feed their flocks on the 
slopes of the Carpathians, and pasture their herds upon the 
tributaries of the Danube, and do We talk of the hardship 
of relieving destitute foreigners, whom the hand of God has 
guided across the ocean and conducted to our doors ? 

Must we learn a lesson of benevolence from the ancient 
heathen ? Let us then learn it. The whole theatre at Rome 
stood up and shouted their sympathetic applause, when the 
actor in one of Terence's plays exclaimed, " I am a man ; 
nothing that is human is foreign to me." 

I am not indifferent to the increase of the public burdens ; 
but the time has been when I have felt a little proud of the 
vast sums paid in the United States for the relief of poor 
immigrants from Europe. It is an annual sum, I have no 
'doubt, equal to the interest on the foreign debt of the States 
which have repudiated their obhgations. When I was in 
London, a few years ago, I received a letter from one of the 
interior counties of England, telling me that they had in their 



32 

house of correction an American seaman, (or a person who 
pretended to be,) who from their account seemed to be both 
pauper and rogue. They were desirous of being rid of him, 
and kindly offered to place him at my disposal. Although 
he did not bid fair to be a very valuable acquisition, I wrote 
back that he might be sent to London, where, if he was a 
sailor, he could be shipped by the American Consul to the 
United States, if not, to be disposed of in some other way. I 
ventured to add the suggestion, that if her Majesty's Minister 
at Washington were applied to in a similar way by the over- 
seers of the poor and wardens of the prisons in the United 
States, he would be pretty busily occupied. But I really felt 
pleased, at a time when my own little State of Massachusetts 
was assisting from ten to twelve thousand destitute British 
subjects annually, to be able to relieve the British empire, on 
which the sun never sets, of the only American pauper quar- 
tered upon it. 

Ladies and gentlemen, ray humble tale is told. In thank- 
ing you for your most kind attention, let me remind you that 
its first incident is Columbus, begging bread for his child at 
the gate of a convent. Its last finds you the stewards of this 
immense abundance, the almoners of this more than imperial 
charity, providing employment and food for starving nations, 
and a home for fugitive races. 






THE <^^ ^^^^i^^e^-Y^z^^^ . 



DISCOVERY 



COLONIZATION OF AMERICA, 



IMMieRATION TO THE UNITED STATES. 



A. LECTURE DELIVERED BEFORE THE NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY, IN 
METROPOLITAN HALL, ON THE IST OF JUNE, 1853. 



EDWARD EVERETT. 



BOSTON: 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 
1853. 



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